


Miles to Go Before I Sleep

by pluperfectsunrise



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M, Romance, Secret Snarry Swap 2019, Slow Burn, Winter Solstice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-13
Updated: 2019-12-13
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:13:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21632731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pluperfectsunrise/pseuds/pluperfectsunrise
Summary: For fourteen years after the war, Harry Potter and Severus Snape dance once a year on the winter solstice at a Ministry ball.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley, Harry Potter/Severus Snape, Severus Snape/Original Male Character(s)
Comments: 85
Kudos: 668
Collections: Secret Snarry Swap19





	Miles to Go Before I Sleep

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for this lovely prompt, prompter! This fic just sort of exploded out of me at the last minute, but I like how it turned out. It was also influenced by Prompt No. 30: A sees B dancing at a Ministry ball and can't resist the urge to cut in.
> 
> And a huge thanks to the mods for giving me an extension and doing all the hard work to make this swap happen.
> 
> Prompt No. 26 from sarahsezlove: Mistletoe: I don't mind if it's an established relationship, newish, or not even happened yet, I'd like a momentous shift in someone's thoughts/feelings to happen under the mistletoe.
> 
> Author's Note 2/20: The brilliant JocundaSykes made a PHENOMENAL [podfic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22677928) of this story. Seriously, it's gorgeous. Go listen to that instead of reading.

The first time that Harry Potter asked Severus Snape to dance, it was a waltz at the Ministry's Order of Merlin awards ceremony following the end of the war. 

Harry was the only person Snape danced with all night. When Snape had been awarded his third-class Order earlier in the evening, a significant portion of the audience had booed.

After stepping off the dance floor and making his way back to his fiancée, Harry saw that Ginny had a pinched expression on her face. 

She got that same sour look the next morning when she showed Harry how he and Snape—dancing—were splashed all over the front page of the _Prophet_.

They didn't look particularly good together, Harry had to admit. Snape had insisted on leading, but Harry hadn't had any idea how to follow and had kept stepping on the other man's feet, earning him numerous glowers from his former professor. Not to mention the glares Snape had given him for asking him to dance in the first place.

"You didn't have any business dancing with him!" Ginny cried, waving the offending headline in front of Harry's nose a few times while he sat at the breakfast table. HARRY DANCES WITH SNAPE, it read. And in smaller letters: IS THERE MORE TO THEIR RELATIONS THAN WE KNOW?

Harry rolled his eyes. Of course there was more to his relations with Snape than anyone knew. Considering how many secrets Snape had been safeguarding for the entirety of Harry's life, there was probably more to his relations with Snape than _Harry_ knew.

"It was a public statement, Gin," he explained patiently, as he'd explained to Snape himself the night before. "He's a hero, but everyone was acting like he snuck into the ceremony uninvited. That wasn't something I could just sit down for." 

Ginny crossed her arms over her chest. "The war's over, Harry. You don't have to keep saving everybody."

"Right. I know." Harry took a deep breath and scooted his chair back from the breakfast table so that he could pull her into his lap. "I'm sorry that the papers are getting everything wrong, as usual. Next one of these things, I'll dance with you every time."

Ginny relaxed slightly as she wrapped her arms around his neck, blowing a clump of her fringe upward from her forehead with a sigh. "You promise?" she asked.

"Absolutely," Harry agreed confidently, offering her a quick peck on the lips.

It wasn't as if he _wanted_ to dance with Snape again. It would be an easy promise to keep.

~

A bit longer than a year later, however, Harry saw Snape at another Ministry gala, their fellow attendees once again surrounding him with a thicket of hostile glares. Harry saw red when he noticed this. After everything Snape had been through ensuring Voldemort's defeat, the very least he deserved was not to be avoided as if he carried the plague.

"The rumors incurred by this little stunt last year were not enough for you?" Snape asked once they'd got into position on the dance floor again.

Harry winced and loosened his hands on the other man's shoulders. "I'm sorry," he answered. "I didn't mean for anyone to think that we were—anything like that. I just hated the way everyone was avoiding you."

Snape's eyes were beady and unpleasant as they held Harry's own. "Perhaps I wished for them to leave me alone," he countered, locking Harry in a sudden spin that nearly made him lose his footing.

"Why would you even come to these events, then?" Harry wondered, righting himself with a frown.

Snape glanced around at the Ministry's newly built banquet hall, which was currently playing host to the war memorial monument that would later be installed at Hogwarts. 

"Because I couldn't think of a better way to honor the dead," Snape answered tartly.

Harry couldn't help snorting with laughter at that.

Personally, he continued attending these events for two reasons, or maybe three. First, because they were raising money for war reparations and the changes to the Ministry that Kingsley was spearheading, with Hermione as his most trusted aide. Second, because Ginny loved a night out, particularly as she wasn't touring with the Harpies this year due to the pregnancy. 

And third, because Robards, who was heading the Auror Office now, had told Harry that it would be good for his career. Ginny had told him how much she wanted him to be promoted away from Junior Auror. "You're the sodding Boy Who Lived," she'd said with a scowl. "You deserve more than the crap assignments they give the new recruits."

Now, as they spun again, Harry noticed with a flare of gratitude that Snape was more careful in making sure that Harry kept his footing.

"I'm sorry in advance for whatever they print about us tomorrow," Harry said as the flash of a camera went off in his eyes.

Snape grunted, and the song ended. Harry went back to his wife.

~

"Mr. Potter. Is this going to become a tradition?" Snape asked the next year.

It was December 21st, the longest night of the year. They were at the Solstice Ball, as the Ministry was now calling it. This would apparently become an annual thing from now on, a gathering emphasizing the vigil that the Light must always hold against Darkness… Or something like that. Harry had definitely sensed some capital letters in the explanation.

"You could always refuse," Harry pointed out.

Snape had actually been at the center of a crowd when Harry approached. A new reporter on the staff of the _Prophet_ —not Rita Skeeter—had published a biography about Snape a half year prior that had painted him in a favorable light (and Harry should know, as he'd given the reporter several interviews). And that, apparently, had finally been enough to start swaying public opinion regarding Snape's true loyalties. Bloody fucking time, in Harry's opinion. 

"And miss out on the good it does my reputation to be believed to be the Chosen One's secret lover?" Snape answered, and a titter swept through the circle of onlookers.

Harry felt himself blushing beet red. "I'm loyal to my wife. Anyone who doesn't think so is an idiot," he answered hotly. 

Ginny wasn't at this particular event. She'd been traveling with the Harpies for the previous month. Harry, meanwhile, was on a leave of absence from work so that he could take care of their ten-month-old son. 

It was only fair, since Ginny had gone on maternity leave the previous year. For their next child, they were talking about using a surrogate.

"I just like having one dance a year where I don't have to worry about how bad I am at leading," Harry finished lamely.

Another laugh swept through the people who were near enough to hear. Harry stood his ground and kept his spine straight. 

Snape was piercing him with one of those looks that might have been Legilimency. Finally, he took Harry's offered hand and grudgingly accompanied him to a clearer spot near the band.

~

"You haven't been sleeping," Snape said, the following year.

Harry blinked, the familiar silky baritone (with a bit of a rasp now, thanks to Nagini) bringing him back to a foggy awareness of his surroundings. "Pardon?"

"I do hope you remember how I feel about repeating myself."

How could Harry forget? "Right," he said. He straightened, realizing that he'd been resting far more of his weight against Snape than he'd intended. "Sorry, it's just…" 

The words were interrupted by a jaw-cracking yawn—emphasizing his former professor's point, Harry supposed. "…I've got a newborn at home, you know. It's been weeks since I got to sleep for more than three hours at a go."

"And yet you made time for this inestimable event? Dip."

The fact that Harry made it through the dip without losing his balance and careening to the floor was due entirely to the surprisingly wiry muscles in Snape's forearms.

"Well, it's for charity," Harry explained as he wobbled upright again. "And it's only once a year. I can sit through all the speeches if it's only once a year." After Jamie was born—and now, with Al to look after as well—Harry had given up going to any Ministry functions except the Solstice Ball and the occasional Auror awards night. Ginny hadn't liked having such a sparse social schedule, but she'd eventually said she understood.

Snape gave a huff of breath that curled warmly against the side of Harry's face. They were dancing at a slow pace to a new victory march that had been on all the wizarding wirelesses that autumn.

"Your child is healthy?"

Harry blinked again, then felt a grin spread across his face. "Al? Yeah. He's perfect. Lizzie—she's the surrogate we used—developed hypertension at thirty-six weeks, so we had to induce...but he turned out absolutely fine, thank god."

"I am pleased to hear that," Snape answered gravely, still without any of the acidity that typically earmarked their interactions. _Four years_ , Harry thought, feeling slightly dizzy all of a sudden. It had been four years since the end of the war.

"Named him after you, you know," he blurted. "His middle name." Al's full name had been released in the _Prophet_ when he was born, so it was unlikely that Snape hadn't caught wind of that already.

"I'd heard," the other man answered dryly. "I feel more appalled than honored, I hope you know."

"Well." Harry shrugged. "No offense, Professor, but your reaction wasn't really the point." How could he explain that Ginny had left the naming of the boys to him, and Harry had felt lost amid the piles of baby name books he'd found at the library until he'd realized he wanted to give his sons the names of people who'd done good for him in one way or another, people who he admired even if they weren't perfect, people who he wanted to understand?

Snape's hands were a steady pressure on his sides, until they weren't anymore. The dancers were applauding the band; the song was over.

"Go home and get some rest, Potter," he said, suddenly sounding as tired as Harry felt.

He slipped away after he said that, a slender frame and greasy hair and inky black robes swallowed by the glittering crowd and lights. Harry was left swaying on his feet, though he didn't know why he felt so unsteady. 

He thought about his children. He missed them, even though he'd seen them just three hours before. Snape was right: he should go home.

~

Snape looked different, the fifth year after the end of the war.

Oh, he was still dressed in black in defiance of the festive colors all around them, and his nose was still hooked. His shoulders were still sharp, his skin was still sallow, his hair was still an oily curtain, and his eyes were still the ones that Harry—for whatever reason—saw most often in the dreams he had when he was almost awake.

But. But! Something was _not the same._

He seemed…thinner, maybe. That didn't make sense, because Snape had been nearly skeletal under those robes before this—and Harry had been close enough now (five times) to find out. Also, if anything, he seemed to have gained a bit of weight in the year since they'd last met. 

But he somehow seemed smaller. No, wait, that sounded negative—and whatever the change was, it was a good one. It meant that a lump had formed in Harry's throat as he'd approached to ask his customary question.

Maybe it was just that Snape looked more human, Harry finally realized as they twirled in time together—more or less—to the music. (This year, it was something rollicking with a drum and a Peruvian flute; infinitely preferable to the wartime marches and stuffy Pureblood waltzes, in Harry's opinion, although of course he still didn't know where to put his feet.)

Human. That was it. All of a sudden, Snape's expression was open in a way that Harry couldn't remember seeing before, perhaps slightly softer. There were fewer lines in his face, and he carried himself with a straight spine, as always…but maybe less stiffness.

He looked like the Half-Blood Prince. The scrawny, brilliant boy that Harry had seen in Snape's memories. The one who'd wept over Harry's mother's death.

"Thank you," Harry gasped out as the music changed, swiftly turning to make a beeline for the exits and fresh air. He was running away, yes—and no, he didn't know why.

_I could call him Severus if he kept looking like that_ , Harry thought as he finally made it out into the night air. He'd ended up pushing through a service exit and emerging in a back alley by the rubbish bins. No moon overhead tonight.

He suddenly wished he smoked, just to have something to do with his hands. His formal robes felt too hot, too constricting around his chest.

_Severus_ , he repeated in his mind. The name was sinking down deep into him, into everything that Harry Potter had been and was and would be; deeper than his bones.

_Severus. Severus. Severus._

~

At the Solstice Ball in the sixth year following the war, Snape brought a date.

He was handsome, Harry supposed. Likely older than Snape by five to ten years. American, by his accent. He had red hair that was peppered with grey and a really nice. Fucking. Smile.

And he was dancing with Snape all night long.

Harry finally had to resort to pulling his former professor aside while his date had gone to the refreshments table.

Snape groaned as soon as he whirled and saw that it was Harry who'd caught the edge of his sleeve. "Not now, Potter!" he hissed. "Can't you see that I'm—"

"Who's your friend, Sev?" a cheery voice interrupted.

"Gareth, this is P—Harry Potter," Snape answered stiffly after a pause, positioning his body away from Harry and toward the man who'd accompanied him that evening.

"Oh, really?" 

Gareth, or whoever he was, carefully handed Snape a glass of champagne, then turned the full force of his bright smile on Harry. "Nice to meet you. I'm Gary Goyle. Just came over from Toronto."

He was Canadian, then. That was even worse.

"Are you visiting for long?" Harry asked, realizing a second too late that he was using his interrogating-suspects voice.

The man's smile turned slightly hesitant. "Well. Maybe." He cast a sidelong glance at Snape. "I was going to tell you when everything was more solid, Sev, but I've actually been offered a transfer to St. Mungo's as Healer-in-Charge of the Janus Thickey Ward."

Snape's lips parted. His eyes were wide. A pleased flush was rising in his sallow cheeks.

Merlin. Harry suddenly felt like an intruder on a private moment. He'd never seen Snape look like that before.

A better man would have gracefully excused himself, leaving the two whatever-they-were—Lovers? Boyfriends?—to celebrate together. 

But Harry wasn't a better man.

He cleared his throat. "What about our dance?"

Snape's eyes darted toward him, slightly wild, before he let them slip closed for an instant. Good. He'd looked a bit murderous before he'd got control of himself, and Harry had no desire to be murdered tonight. Being the responsible guardian of two small children and all.

"Dance?" asked Gary-the-successful-Healer-from-Canada, his eyebrows rising politely.

"We do it every year," Harry explained. "The papers call it the Amnesty Dance." 

It was true: the public at large had stopped reading anything dicey into the tradition a few years ago, to Harry's (and Ginny's; and probably Snape's) relief. "Because, you know, of how much we used to hate each other. And being Gryffindor and Slytherin, I suppose."

Gary's forehead wrinkled in apparent confusion—but then it cleared. "Oh, those are two of your Houses at Hogwarts, aren't they? Which one were you in, Sev?"

Harry's mouth opened. The word 'gormlessly' might have applied.

"Stop sputtering, Potter," Snape said, obviously making an effort to regain his equilibrium. "House affiliation isn't the end and beginning of everything." 

If anything, though, that only made Harry's sputtering louder. " _You're_ saying that?" he squeaked. " _You?_ But—but... My whole childhood!" 

He was waving his arms in the air the way Al did whenever he wanted to pretend to be a bee or a bat. It didn't seem to be getting his point across, unfortunately.

He tried again. "What about all that House loyalty crap, and bullying me because I was in Gryffindor—"

"Shut up, Potter," Snape interrupted. Quickly, he lifted the champagne glass to his lips and drained the contents in a single gulp—and yes, Harry was impressed by that, since it was bloody cool. 

"I will dance with you, on the condition that you cease these histrionics immediately, then leave me in peace afterwards for another year," the man said in a menacing voice once the glass was empty.

"Don't I always?" Harry quipped, holding out his arm. He was still trying to wrap his brain around the fact that anyone who would dance all night with Severus Snape didn't know that he'd been a Slytherin—the very best of Slytherin.

Snape said a few quick words in a low voice to Gary, then took Harry's offered elbow and towed them to a clear spot on the floor. His arms locked into place on Harry's waist, and Harry slipped his own around Snape's neck. The song had just changed: something Muggle and from the eighties, as far as he could tell. He thought it might be one of the songs that Hermione had put on the Dance Party playlist she'd made for when little Rose and Hugo were stuck indoors on rainy days. 

"Little lies, tell me sweet little lies," crooned the lead singer with a _Sonorus_ amplifying her voice.

Harry cast about for something neutral to talk about as they shuffled together. He really, really wanted to pry...but it wasn't as if he and Snape were friends. So he shouldn't ask too many personal questions, right?

"Goyle?" he finally managed. "Is he a relative of…?"

"That branch of the family migrated to the Toronto area in the nineteenth century, so the relation to your schoolfellow is distant at best. As far as I know, the Canadian Goyles have positive standings in both the Muggle and wizarding communities and no penchant for dabbling in Dark magic."

Snape had said all of that in one breath. It had almost sounded rehearsed.

"Okay," Harry answered slowly. "So…his name is Gar Goy—"

"Don't," Snape snapped, casting a glare down at him that could lance boils.

Right. Making fun of his date's unfortunate name would probably be unwise.

Harry held his tongue until he couldn't anymore. "I mean, does he even know what you did in the war?" he finally wondered, unable to help himself.

They needed to turn if they were going to avoid crashing into another couple. Snape guided them flawlessly.

"Can't you see that I'm trying to move on?" he finally answered, so quiet that Harry wouldn’t have heard it if he'd been any farther away.

Oh. In a rush, Harry understood why Snape might not want to bring up Slytherin House—or Gryffindor, or maybe even Hogwarts at all—with someone who was willing to dance with him all night.

Harry exhaled. He'd always admired people who knew how to leave well enough alone.

"I'm sorry," he said, taking one of his hands away from Snape's shoulders to scratch his nose, then straighten his glasses. "If he makes you happy, that's good enough for me."

Snape's face dipped toward his.

"Close my, close my, close my eyes," sang the lead singer of the band.

"You're a sentimental idiot, Potter." The words came as a rumble that Harry felt reverberate his former professor's lean chest. "But thank you."

When it came time to relinquish his dance partner back to the Canadian, Harry heard a snippet of the conversation as he walked away. "He's a strange young man, isn't he?" Gary Goyle was saying. "Not a very good dancer."

Harry twisted, and his eyes met Snape's over Gary's shoulder. Snape's lips moved in reply, but Harry couldn't hear the words.

~

The seventh year after the war, Harry didn't attend the Solstice Ball. His cat was having baby cats.

He explained that to Snape as soon as the man arrived on Harry's doorstep, right after Harry stopped boggling at the fact that Severus Snape was standing on his doorstep on the solstice, in the snow.

"Kittens?" Snape asked, a wrinkle forming between his thick eyebrows.

"Baby cats," Harry agreed. "Five of them. They look like Winston Churchill." Stepping backward through the open door, Harry ushered Snape inside and closed it tightly again before too many drafts came in.

Harry felt his skin prickle. He turned to see that Snape was looking him over from head to toe.

"So your absence from a highly public charity event has nothing to do with the fact that your wife left you two weeks ago?" he asked in his silky 'Detention, Potter' drawl.

"Shush!" Harry hissed, with all the passion of the parent who gets one hour of personal time a day, if he's lucky. "The boys are asleep. If I have to get them back down, it'll be your fault, and I will never forgive you."

The eyebrow Snape lifted was pure skepticism. "The laboring cat didn't wake them?"

He had spoken in a lower voice, at least. "Well, I do have sound-dampening wards up around their rooms," Harry conceded in a mutter. 

"Where are the cat and kittens now?"

"Hm? Oh, Madame Curie made a safe nest in with Mibbles, our free elf." After a pause, he felt the need to explain, "Madame Curie is the cat." Jamie had been going through a phase of idolizing Muggle scientists when they'd named her.

"Make yourself at home, I guess," Harry added, waving at the sitting room and the couch as he stomped back toward the kitchen. What was Snape doing here? Had he come to snipe and sneer at Harry for his stupid failed life full of failure?

Snape had followed him into the kitchen, of course. Harry doubted that he'd do what Harry told him even if there was a wand at his throat. "How's Gary?" he asked as he poured himself another two—make that three—fingers of scotch.

"Attending a Healers' conference in Istanbul." Snape flicked his wand toward the stream of alcohol, making it freeze in midair, then slurp its way back into the bottle.

Simple-seeming magic—and yet it was the mark of a truly powerful and incredibly disciplined wizard.

A powerful, disciplined, condescending prick of a wizard. "I needed that!" Harry protested in another hiss. Forgoing his tumbler, he picked up the bottle and took a swig directly from the mouth, glaring balefully at the other man all the while.

"Potter."

"You're always saying my name like that," Harry complained. " _Pot-ter._ Like it tastes bad. You don't see me going around being all _Sna-ape_."

The man grimaced, then stepped into Harry's personal space—close enough that Harry had to slit his eyes when he looked up at him because Snape was blocking the overhead kitchen light, and otherwise he would have been nothing but a dark outline. 

Holding Harry's gaze, Snape plucked the bottle from his hand and re-stoppered it, pushing it to the back of the counter. "Mr. Potter," he enunciated slowly. "While I am willing to acknowledge that the situation in which you find yourself regarding the abrupt end to your marriage lends itself to the act of getting well and utterly pissed, you seem to have forgotten something."

"What?" Harry demanded after a few seconds of parsing through that ridiculous sentence.

Snape smiled.

"The Amnesty Dance."

"Bloody hell," Harry swore, borrowing one of Ron's favorite phrases. Snape's smile was _terrifying_. Was this payback for what had happened last year? 

He took a step back, and his hips hit the counter's edge. The room was swimming. "I don't want to dance tonight," he answered, bowing his head until it collided with Snape's chest.

The other man's arms rose to circle him, and all thoughts of whether this was an obscure kind of Snape-ish revenge fled Harry's head. Instead, he had the sudden mad and giddy realization that he could fall apart right now...and Snape would let him.

After a time, he realized that they were swaying from side to side.

"She said I'd be better off without her," Harry finally grunted. "That we'd been doing nothing but saying the lines of a script for years."

Snape made a small humming noise that neither confirmed nor disagreed with this idea.

"She said she never wanted to end up like her mum, always changing dirty nappies, doing nothing but worry about what trouble her brood was getting into as they all grew up." Harry bit his lower lip, still staring down at the tiles on the kitchen floor. "I'd asked if she wanted to try for another, maybe a little girl this time."

He finally ventured a look up. This close, he could see how the scars from Nagini's fangs were embedded deep in Snape's neck, almost purple in this light. As it always did, visceral horror swept through him at the sight…so he focused on the soft fan of Snape's hair and the vein throbbing in his jaw instead. 

"And the awful part is, I'm not even very sad that she's gone," Harry finally finished. "Not for me. We didn't actually talk that much anymore, script or otherwise. It's just, the kids. I never wanted this for them." He shook his head, defeated. "She does love them, but she's taking a new job for some international sports journal, so she'll be traveling most of the time."

Snape's arms were still a tight band of support around Harry's sides. One hand was tracing a slow circle over his denims on one hip. "You believe it would be better for your sons' future emotional stability to grow up with parents who are miserable, but determined to ignore it?" he rasped against Harry's forehead.

Harry exhaled in a gust. To his fierce embarrassment, he felt hot tears trying to squeeze out between his closed lids. 

"I guess not," he sniffed. He'd never been a crier—the Dursleys had taught him that it did little good. As a small child, he'd been much more likely to get the back of Uncle Vernon's fist for being loud and pathetic if he cried than any sort of sympathy. 

But there was a pressure inside of him now, a balloon inflating in his chest. And Snape was still rocking him back and forth in this strained and strange sort of hug. 

And Harry was scared, so bloody scared of going forward into the future without Ginny—being a single parent, giving the boys everything they deserved, all the love and attention and security Harry himself had never had when he was growing up. He didn't know if he could do it by himself.

The tears leaked out, and Harry clung to a bony frame and black robes until he'd finally seen them through.

~

This was a terrible idea, Harry thought as he forced himself to smile again at the young woman who'd agreed to be his date to the next Solstice Ball.

Her name was Lydia. She was an assistant at the wizarding tea shop that had opened next to Harry's favorite entrance to the Ministry of Magic. She'd been sympathetic over the divorce. She'd thought it was impressive that he'd been promoted to Head of the Auror Office at only twenty-five. She was sweet and very pretty. 

And even though he'd attended the ball without Ginny a few times in the past, the thought of going alone this year had made Harry's heartbeat go a bit panicky. Lydia was the first person he'd thought to ask.

But having her here with him was a disaster. She was far too keen on posing for pictures with her arm linked through Harry's; and she didn't understand why he wanted to dance with Severus Snape.

"He's twenty years older than you! And a _man_. Didn't he kill Albus Dumbledore right in front of you? And he terrorized you when you were in school! Didn't he try to get you expelled?"

Lydia, Harry realized, had read his biography.

He finally got the opportunity to dance with Snape while Lydia was using the loo. By necessity, it was to a song that was so high-pitched, as Al and Jamie had explained, because it was supposedly sung by chipmunks. Muggle Christmas music had been making inroads in wizarding society over the past few years. 

Even so, the dance was over too quickly, and another year was slow to pass.

~

The ninth year after the war, Harry offered Snape his heartfelt congratulations.

Predictably, Snape dismissed the well-wishes with a minimalist shrug, then an expressive flick of a wrist. "It won't be for several years to come. Minerva has no wish to retire immediately."

"But you'll be Headmaster again by the time Jamie is old enough for Hogwarts," Harry protested. A wave of worry swamped through him suddenly, and he tried not to clench the hands that were on Snape's upper arms into fists. "You won't bully him the way you did me, right?"

Snape hadn't exactly been slumping as they danced—he was too innately graceful for that—but Harry could practically hear his spine snapping straight with the request. "If you expect me to cater to lack of effort merely because he's your son—"

"No, not that." Harry smoothed his hands down Snape's arms, a gesture prompted by instinct more than anything else. "You don't need to go easy on him. Just…treat him fairly." He took a breath. There was nothing more important to Harry than his children's well-being, and he believed that Snape understood this. "Please."

The other man studied him for a beat, guiding Harry carefully into a pivot. "Very well," he finally agreed. "You have my word."

Harry closed his eyes briefly, letting his relief wash over his face. "Thank you."

"Do you require an Unbreakable Vow as well?"

The tone of the question had been brittle and acidic. Harry blinked, taking a hand away from Snape to adjust his glasses. "No, of course not. I trust you."

Snape's chest swelled with an inhale. A red stain appeared in his cheeks in blotches.

Harry felt a surge of delight course through him at the sight, though he wouldn't have known how to call it by name.

~

The tenth year following the war, Snape was the one who didn't come to the ball.

Things were surprisingly circular sometimes, Harry mused after he'd arrived at Spinner's End in time to hold Snape's hair back as he retched into a bucket that Harry had found under the bathroom sink.

When Snape's stomach had finished emptying itself, he sat up, wiped his mouth, and narrowed his bloodshot eyes angrily at the younger man. "—and it was his own fucking orderly he was fucking," he finished, as if the story had never been interrupted by an overwhelming need to vomit.

"That fucking bastard," Harry answered sympathetically. He knew he'd hated Gary Goyle for a reason. 

Snape regarded Harry levelly. Then, he reached for his bottle of tequila (an awful cheap kind, Harry knew from tasting it; the foulness of the swill hadn't kept him from commiserating with Snape by joining in) and took another swig.

"We should steal his car."

"Yeah," Harry agreed. And then, "Huh?"

"You heard me." Snape stood and struck a pose with one leg up on the tatty old couch, the bottle raised to his lips once more. It sort of made him look like a pirate, Harry realized. Merlin, how was Snape always so _cool_? 

"We'll steal it," the former Potions Master decided, a rough burr slipping into the silk snare that he usually wove of his words. "And then we'll sink it in the river."

With only the minutest of sways, Snape dropped his chin, took his foot off the couch, and strode toward the door. 

"Wait!" Harry called after him, jumping up to follow. "Don't try to App'rate, you'll splinch—"

A whirl of purple and a blaring horn cut Harry off just as he made it outside. Snape had called the Knight Bus.

"That'll be eleven sickles each," Stan Shunpike announced as the door popped open. He straightened his purple cap with a surly expression. "Don' think it's less because you're celebrities."

Snape grunted something at him and tossed over the money, then twisted back toward Harry. One imperious eyebrow rose. "Coming, Potter?"

"Um," Harry said. Thank Merlin Jamie and Al were having a sleepover with Teddy Lupin tonight. He gripped his wand and locked and warded Snape's front door, then stumbled up the steps of the bus behind the other man.

By the time he and Snape were sharing one of the four-posters as the bus lurched forward at gut-curdling speeds, all of the breath in Harry's body was leaving it in a surprisingly high-pitched series of giggles.

"Good god, Potter, shut up," Snape finally hissed near his ear.

Harry got control of himself—more or less—and turned onto his side to face the other man. They were sharing a pillow. This bed wasn't really built for two. 

"We can't steal Gargoyle's car," he hissed in return. "I'm a Aurel—an Aurr… I'm police!"

Only one of Snape's eyes was visible through a dark mess of hair that had fallen in his face. "You and Weasley were imbecilic enough to fly a stolen car to Scotland," he pointed out.

"I was _twelve_!" Harry tried to protest—but then brakes were squealing again, and only the Imperturbable charm on the bedcurtains kept Harry from tumbling down to the floor with the sudden stop. 

Once again, Harry found himself chasing Snape's rapid strides out into the cold night air. 

When he'd stumbled to the ground and the Knight Bus had Dis-Apparated with a roar behind him, he saw that they'd landed in a quiet neighborhood south of London. It sort of reminded Harry of Little Whinging and the Dursleys. Yurgh.

At least some of the houses were painted colors other than white. Moving more slowly now, Snape led the way to the driveway of one that was a rather nice light green. 

"Looks like no one's home," Harry said, shoving his hands in his jacket pockets and glancing up at the closed blinds.

"Perhaps not," Snape agreed, squinting. There certainly wasn't a car—flying or otherwise—parked in the driveway.

"Do you have a key?" Harry wondered, realizing a second later what a very, very bad question that was. Merlin's tits, he was a terrible Auror.

"He leaves the back door unlocked," Snape answered.

Which was why Harry found himself scrabbling over a wooden fence three minutes later. He'd refused to follow Snape in the actual breaking and entering at first, but shortly after the other man had disappeared over the fence to the back of the house, Harry had heard an ominous splash.

Landing and tripping in some shrubbery, he clambered upright again and raced around the house...to see that Snape had fallen into some sort of ornamental fishpond. He was floundering and half-floating, half-sinking, covered in freshwater algae.

Without hesitating, Harry waded into the pond beside him and hoisted Snape up under the armpits, ignoring his cursing and attempts to shove the younger man away.

"Stop fighting me, you pillock! You're going to drown yoursel—"

A light went on in Gary Goyle's house.

Acting on instinct and his Auror training, Harry had pulled Snape under the cover of a nearby hedge as quickly and as quietly as possible. Fuck, he wished he had his Invisibility Cloak or the time to Disillusion them both right now.

But the backdoor slid open, and Gary came out, his wand casting an arc of amber light over the fountain, where water was still sloshing.

The man stepped down off the back porch and padded closer.

Seeing the Canadian wizard up close through the screen of branches that separated them, fury suddenly sang through Harry's veins. This complete shit who was standing less than two meters away from him had had Severus Snape's trust and affection—and instead of treating that precious and rare gift with the care it deserved, he'd joined the long train of people who'd abused Severus's hidden depths of loyalty and passion.

A hand clamped over Harry's mouth. Another snaked around his waist, locking him into place.

"You will not fuck up your career in an asinine attempt to defend my honor," Severus whispered in Harry's ear, almost soundless. Harry's own heartbeat was louder than the words.

If Gary hadn't been so near, Harry would have twisted to glare at his former professor. How was it that Severus had suddenly grown a conscience about involving Harry in illegal activities at the exact point that Harry had decided his own conscience was nothing but an inconvenience?

As it was, Harry knew that shifting so much as to snap a twig could lead to discovery. He stayed still.

Somehow, though, he'd ended up with his back to Severus's long front—being spooned, for lack of a better term. And yes, his trousers were soaked in patches. And yes, it was almost cold enough out for snow.

But something about the solidness of the man behind him and the weight of the arm holding him down and Severus's gusts of breaths in his hair and maybe even the hand over his mouth was really doing it for Harry. 

Getting an erection in wet underwear was a weird sensation, but not weird enough to stop it from happening. Apparently.

Harry stuck his tongue out and discovered that Severus's palm tasted like wood smoke. And apricots.

The hand jerked away, leaving only the chill of winter in its place—but the arm around his hips tightened.

As soon as Gary Goyle turned and went back inside, Harry twisted to face his captor. He couldn't make out much of Severus's face in the dark. He leaned forward until their noses touched.

Severus's eyes darted downward, then flicked back up to Harry's face. The hand that had been splayed on Harry's stomach slid down until it cupped the swelling in his wet trousers.

Severus's mouth opened and closed soundlessly, and then he took his warm palm away before Harry had finished debating the wisdom of thrusting up into it.

"Mm," Harry sighed, confused and resigned.

"We'd best wait a while longer," Severus replied, slightly strangled.

Harry reached for his wand and cast a series of drying and warming charms, then shifted, rearranging their bodies so that Severus was draped on top of him, his head on Harry's chest and Harry's arms around him. He was surprised but pleased that the other man allowed this—but maybe the exhaustion that came with sobering up was finally hitting them both.

There was music coming from somewhere, Harry realized. Someone in the house next door was playing scales on a piano. 

He pressed a kiss to Severus's hair and rocked them side to side. "I’m sorry he cheated on you," he whispered. "You deserve so much more."

"Shut up, Potter," Severus answered, muffled by Harry's chest. His breaths were rasping and coming far too fast.

Harry hummed to himself—and held on.

~

Harry's date to the next Solstice Ball was a bloke named Kevin.

Kevin worked for Gringotts. He was hot in a professorly sort of way, though not quite as tall and dark and sarcastic as Harry might have liked.

He was also the first man who Harry had dated seriously. Harry had come to a sort of uneasy truce with his bisexuality over the previous year and had gone out with a few blokes on the rare nights when Jamie and Al were elsewhere, but Kevin was the first one he'd actually wanted to see more than once.

Unfortunately, Harry was just finishing using the urinal when Severus pushed into the loo. "Potter, are you aware that your date is currently snogging the violinist?" he drawled.

Harry blinked, then poked his head out of the door to check.

Yep.

Feeling righteously miffed as he ducked back inside, Harry fought the urge to bang his head against the wall. "But I've got so much _lube_ ," he whined.

Severus's expression at that, Harry would decide later, was one of the best things he'd seen in his entire life. If he'd had a photo of it, he would have pasted it above his bed and given it a shit-eating grin every night before falling asleep.

"Taking to sodomy that vigorously?" the man asked once he'd stopped looking like a deer caught in headlights.

Still leaning against the wall, Harry crossed his arms over his chest. "It was a gift," he explained, taking pity and making a valiant effort not to do something insufferable like wiggle his eyebrows at the man. All right, maybe just a small wiggle.

Severus leveled Harry with an unreadable stare in response to this, the one that, in Harry's experience, might mean anything from 'I hate you, you insipid little fool' to 'I would die to protect you, you insipid little fool.'

"Which Weasley?" was all he asked instead.

Harry shifted, uncrossing his arms and sticking his hands in his pockets. "George. I think it was meant to be a sort of 'Welcome to Being Bent' gift, or something like that. A sample of the Wheezes' entire line."

Severus's eyes widened again. "Jesus. Don't tell me they're—"

"Flavored. Yeah."

"Fuck's sake," Severus groaned. "He tried to consult me on those. Which flavors wouldn't neutralize the base, how to incorporate a numbing agent that would affect pain but not pleasure, whether the flavors in question could transfer to the taste of the ejaculate."

Harry would have to think about hearing Severus Snape say the word 'ejaculate' later, he decided. When he was alone.

Now, he straightened his glasses. "Could they?" he wondered. "I mean, what did you tell him?"

"That I could bottle fame and brew glory, not chocolate-flavored lubricant," Severus deadpanned with a snort. "Obviously."

"I don't think I've got a chocolate one," Harry answered with a snicker.

Pulling a small package from his robes that said _George Weasley's Every-Flavored Lube_ in fancy lettering, Harry unshrank it and opened the flap at the top. He rifled through the contents quickly. "Let's see… Carrot. Banana. Cheese Curds. Snow Pea. Petrol. Pumpkin. Paprika. Mint. Hamburger. Cinnamon. Codfish. No chocolate."

Chewing his lower lip, Harry glanced at their surroundings. This particular men's bathroom was more spacious than many, and it had obviously been hit with some very thorough cleaning charms right before the gala began. Staying here for an hour wouldn't be the worst way to avoid having his picture appear in the _Prophet_ the next day as Kevin's jilted lover.

"Want to hide in here with me for a while?" he asked his former professor hopefully.

Severus looked skeptical and slightly flustered at the invitation.

That was better than refusing it outright. "C'mon," Harry wheedled. "I know you're dying to taste the cod-flavored one."

The older man's nose wrinkled. "My father's brother was a fisherman. He always smelled like cod."

"So not that, then. Paprika?"

Severus dipped his chin and leaned back against the closed door. His nostrils flared. "I suppose, from a purely professional standpoint, I am…curious."

_Life_ , Harry thought a while later as he and Severus sat on the floor of a loo of the Ministry's best banquet hall with a warded door and ranked twenty lube samples by worst to best taste. It could, on occasion, be a truly splendid thing.

And _eleven years_.

~

On the twelfth winter solstice after the war's end, Severus caught Harry's eyes as soon as he entered the Ministry's banquet hall.

Every year when the days started shortening and the nights grew cold and long, Harry would get more and more eager to see Severus again; as such, he had no qualms about excusing himself from his utterly boring conversation with the Minister of Finance and jogging up to the other man. 

"Headmaster," he said with a smile, his chin lifted.

Severus looked down his nose at Harry. "Auror Potter," he replied, grave and correct. The sides of his own lips were twitching upward, though only a bit.

There was no way Harry wasn't going to count that as a win—or better yet, a championship Quidditch game where he'd been the one to catch the Snitch.

"Would you care to dance?" he asked.

He'd long ago stopped feeling the desire to hide from Severus's focused attention. He actually sort of reveled in it now, Harry realized.

"I do believe I would," Severus finally acknowledged. 

The music swelled around them, and their hands linked, palm to palm. Severus's grip in Harry's was dry and strong, soft and warm.

~

_Thirteen years_ , Harry thought at the next Solstice Ball. Thirteen years after the war, and they were finally talking about Harry's mum.

"I think she would have been really proud of you," Harry said, as he pulled a low-hanging branch out of their path.

"I hope so," Severus agreed as he passed through, sounding doubtful, but also calmer than Harry might have expected. The plume of his breath dissolved into the twinkling blackness of the night sky, which was clear of clouds, though yesterday's snow was still on the ground.

For various political reasons that Harry didn't actually give a kneazle's fart about, the Solstice Ball this year had been moved to a Pureblood manor house. The sort of place that had way more forks than Harry could be expected to know what to do with, even if he was Head of the DMLE now. 

But the manor made a pretty setting, not least because of its extensive grounds that backed against a dense forest. After their dance—a traditional reel, leaving Harry flushed and panting and incredibly grateful to Severus for coaxing him through the steps—they'd decided to break away from the main party and take a stroll through the snowy gardens.

It was beautiful out tonight, Harry admitted freely. The bushes and trees were bare of leaves, but laden heavily with snow, and the night sky stretched above them, cold and lovely and endless. The moon was a bright crescent sitting low to the south.

Most of all, though, Harry was reveling in the simple pleasure of having Severus by his side, talking about the past.

They spoke in low voices. "You still miss her, don't you?"

"Hm." The other man made a dry sound in his throat, neither a yes or a no. He paused and wrapped a gloved hand around a tree branch—steadying and anchoring himself, Harry supposed.

Severus cleared his throat again. "I lost Lily long before she died," he finally said. "What I miss, truly, is the carelessness of when we were alone together as children, the conviction that, if there was one essential thing about the world, it was that we would always remain friends." His eyes were fixed on the shadows around them. "Although I was never the careless sort, as I'm sure you're aware, and I didn't quite believe it even then."

Severus began walking again.

"It's hard," Harry agreed quietly, keeping up. "It's hard to trust in good things. That you'll get to keep them. That they're yours." He smiled sideways at his companion.

Severus quirked an eyebrow back at him, though his expression remained largely inscrutable. They walked in silence for a time.

"I was thinking," Harry began again in the darkness and the snowy woods' muffled isolation. "I was thinking that I might want a change of careers."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. I mean, heading the Auror Office and now the DMLE is a big honor, and I was happy it got me out of so many dangerous situations in the field, for my sons' sake…but, to be honest, this is a career I fell into because it was easy. Because I'm good at it, and it's what everyone thought would be best for me."

Harry shivered and laughed. "But everything else in my life went sideways from what I planned—and thank Merlin for that." He'd have been quietly but totally depressed if he and Ginny were still together, he knew. "So why not this, too?"

Severus turned to peer down at him. They'd reached a small, frosted clearing. It felt solemn and private.

"As you might or might not be aware, Hagrid is retiring at the end of term," he said.

Harry leaned back against a tree trunk. "Yeah, I'd heard about that. Moving to Beauxbatons to be closer to Madame Maxime, right?"

Severus was still watching his face with a guarded intensity. "This means that the position of Groundskeeper and Care of Magical Creatures Professor is available for the coming year."

"Okay." Harry raised his eyebrows. "Are you having trouble filling it?"

"Potter. I'm offering it to you."

Harry blinked at him.

"You have a steady hand with animals," the other man continued, "and children. And both of your sons will be at Hogwarts next year, so I'm sure you would appreciate being near them."

Harry blinked again.

As the silence stretched, Severus's eyes narrowed. "I realize it would be quite a step down for you," he added, impatience and insecurity sharpening his voice. "I would offer you the DADA post, but de Vaughn's contract doesn't expire for another two years—"

"Shh," Harry interrupted. "I hear something."

"Potter!" Severus hissed behind him—but Harry had already started ducking between the trees again.

What he found at the source of the barely-perceptible noises was a dying creature: a unicorn with a gash in its side that was oozing dark blood. 

It reminded Harry of another unicorn in another forest, long ago. Thankfully, no foul horcrux-monster was feasting on the poor animal this time. To Harry's untrained eyes, the wound looked to have been made by another of the unicorn's kind, perhaps accidentally, perhaps in some sort of battle. It seemed to reach all the way to the animal's heart.

The creature let out a scream that pierced the night when Harry began to approach.

"He won't want us near," Severus said, laying a hand on Harry's shoulder. "Unicorns do not like to die in company."

"And neither of us is particularly pure," Harry agreed. 

He tried to look around for inspiration, but the woods were just the dark outlines of trees. "Do you know any Healing we can cast from here?" he asked desperately.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Severus look down toward their boots on the white ground; then he lifted his face back up and shot a rapid series of spells that sparkled bright gold from the tip of his wand.

It did no good: the volley rebounded from its target with a ripple in the air and a sound like a timpani being struck, thundering around them and knocking snow from the tree branches. Harry winced against the flurry of lights and the noise. 

Severus was breathing hard. "I believe that this is a ritual intended for the turn of the seasons, the beginning of winter," he gasped after a pause. "He has no intent to live."

Of all people, Harry understood the power of sacrifice.

Still, he'd never been able to watch an innocent's suffering and do nothing. Leaning into the contact with Severus—the man was still standing near enough that Harry could feel his warmth—Harry drew strength from it, calming his breaths and closing his eyes. His wand was already in his hand, so he reached down deep and thought of his children, Ron and Hermione, the electrical charge that shivered up his spine every time he saw Severus again after another year had passed.

Harry opened his eyes again and whispered, "Expecto patronum."

Harry didn't know if his Patronus's companionship would be welcome to the animal in its moments of dying…but it was the best and purest part of him, so maybe it could offer some sort of solace that the unicorn would accept.

The white stag flared from his wand and bounded forward across the snow, leaving no hoofprints as he ran. He reached the dying creature and circled it twice, then came to a halt in front of the animal, chest swollen, head and antlers raised. Standing guard.

The world stilled, except for the unicorn's labored and stuttering breathing, its eyelids fluttering.

"Expecto patronum," came a rasp from beside and slightly behind him.

Harry half-turned in time to watch the long-remembered silver doe leap from Severus's wand. She raced forward to join her male counterpart, stopping to touch her nose to his briefly before lying down curled against the unicorn, her head resting on his heaving flank.

Severus's Patronus was just as beautiful as she'd been all those years ago in the Forest of Dean, and she still cast a strange mixture of peace and longing into Harry's turbulent thoughts. 

His own breaths were shuddering, now. His glasses were fogged with tears. It had been so _long_ since the war, and yet, at moments like this, it was more vivid and real than anything that had come since, and it all hurt enough to have happened yesterday.

But then there were arms around Harry's waist, fingers clenched in the robes over his stomach, a thin but solid chest that he could lean back against. "Think of your sons," Severus said into his ear. "Think of their births. Think of their favorite foods. James's favorite class. Albus's favorite program on telly…"

Slowly, the present day reasserted itself. It was 2011. He was thirty-one years old, watching over the end of a unicorn's life. The ground was solid beneath his feet, snow crunching softly. It was the longest night of the year, the turning point; after this, light would start coming back. The planet was spinning through the arc of a galaxy of stars.

"Thanks," Harry whispered, resting his head against Severus's collarbone. His hand found the other man's, an interlocked grasp. 

Severus's only response was to exhale and tighten his arms.

They kept vigil together until the unicorn's last breath.

~

Harry spent the fourteenth December 21st after the end of the war at Hogwarts. He was the groundskeeper now, after all, and Severus had decided to let the students have their own solstice dance.

He'd actually spent the day up to that point with his ex-wife, helping Ginny unpack in the new house she'd bought for herself near Aberdeen. 

It turned out that Ginny had had an ulterior motive for requesting his help: she wanted to know how he thought the boys would take the news that she'd got engaged again.

Harry didn't have any problems reassuring her. "They're smart kids," Harry explained. "As long as they still see you fairly often and they know you're happy, they'll be fine."

The redhead had exhaled between her teeth. "Okay," she said softly. She shook her head and looked up into his eyes. "I was never a natural at this like you, Harry. I'm sorry I made you do so much of it alone."

Harry couldn't help cracking a smile. He'd waited seven years for this apology—and now that it had finally come, he really didn't know what to do with it. "Being adults isn't what we thought it would be, is it?" he finally decided to ask.

Ginny snorted. "I suppose not," she agreed. 

Going back to magically unsealing her stacks of packed boxes, she cleared her throat. "What about you and Snape?" she added, her tone far too casual.

"What about us?" Harry wondered, forcing himself not to pause in the process of putting Ginny's dresses on hangers.

Ginny rolled her eyes and gave him a look that told Harry they'd been married too long for her not to know his secrets. "I _mean_ , what are you waiting for?" she wondered, tossing her plait over one shoulder and fisting her hands on her hips.

Harry took a moment to compose himself under the guise of rolling his shoulders. “It's not that simple," he finally said. "I'm scared, Gin. What if…what if we honestly try—and it all still goes wrong, like it did for you and me?”

"Hm." Ginny crossed her arms over her chest and tilted her chin up, watching the motes of dust in a sunbeam. "Well, I don't know if I can reassure you," she eventually answered. "I just know that, when we were together…you wanted someone who could give you a family, not me in particular. I was just the shortest route to get there."

It was a harsh way to put it, but she wasn't wrong. "You know how sorry I am about that?" Harry answered, chagrined.

"I do." The woman waved a hand dismissively. "What I'm trying to say is, what you have with Snape isn't for any reason like that. It's too strange to be anything but real."

Ginny didn't know the half of it, Harry thought, feeling sort of as if he were sinking and flying at the same time.

They went back to the grimy work in a companionable silence, and Ginny didn't bring up Severus again until Harry was getting ready to leave. That was when she took his face in her hands. "What would you regret more," she asked him quietly. "Having a go with him and failing miserably, or not trying at all?"

Harry knew the answer, of course.

Now, night had fallen; Harry had Apparated home to Hogwarts, and the party was in full swing. The Great Hall looked amazing tonight, with tinsel strung up and a great green tree full of pixies on one wall and a table with a feast of cakes and other sweets on the opposite. Candelabra floated overhead, a string quartet played lively holiday music, and the ceiling was a map of stars and wispy clouds. 

With a full term back at Hogwarts under his belt now, Harry was happy to say that he didn't regret giving up his position as head of the DMLE in the slightest. He'd hesitated for months before accepting Severus's offer, but the reasons the other man had listed that Harry might like the job were true. He did enjoy teaching the kids, who were sort of in awe of him but also excited about the class—and the gentleness he needed in order to develop a rapport with the animals had come to Harry naturally. Madame Curie the cat even liked living here at the castle, since there were far more mice to chase.

On top of all that, it just felt _right_ to be back at Hogwarts, as if the needle of a record player in Harry that had been skipping for years had finally jerked back into its intended groove. Hogwarts had been Harry's first real home, and he'd walked to his death as a teenager so that other lost children could find a home in it as well.

And Severus was here, of course. It had been wonderful to see him almost daily for the past few months, after they'd survived so long on just one meeting per year.

At the present moment, Severus was in his element, all dark flaring robes and commanding presence. After scathingly reprimanding a student for trying to spike the bowl of apple cider on the refreshments table, he caught Harry's eyes across the room.

And it was the winter solstice, after all, so soon Harry was slipping into the familiar circle of the other man's arms, so very comfortable after all of the years and dances behind them.

The floor cleared for the two of them. The music swelled, a haunting but beautiful lament.

"For I have loved you well and long,  
Delighting in your company. 

Greensleeves was all my joy.  
Greensleeves was my delight…" 

For Harry, the world fell away now whenever he and Severus danced. He didn't know if they looked good together, and he still didn't really have a clue what he was doing…but that had stopped mattering a while ago. Now, all that mattered was how alive he felt when he was moving in time with the other man, brushing their bodies together, letting Severus help him catch the rhythm. Alive, and aware of possibilities; and not precisely greedy, but poised on the brink of a possibility in which he knew he would be capable of great greed.

All too quickly, however—ah, Greensleeves, now farewell, adieu—the melody trembled to a close. 

And Severus had to break up a duel on the other side of the room between a Hufflepuff and a Gryffindor over a Slytherin, so Harry found himself dancing with Pomona Sprout instead. 

When he next spotted the other man, Severus was glaring up at a sprig of floating mistletoe that had darted above his head and seemed intent to stay there. It had five waxy white berries nestled in its leaves, meaning that Severus would need to be given five kisses before it disappeared.

_This,_ Harry thought, in an internal voice that almost didn't sound like his voice at all. This was what he'd been waiting for—waiting such a very long time.

But before he could make his way through the crowd of students and faculty to get to Severus, a wave of giggling spread through the assemblage as Madame Hooch leaned over and laid what was likely a very boozy kiss on Severus's cheek. This was rapidly followed by Filius Flitwick tugging Severus down so that he could kiss the other side, then chortling gleefully at the indignant glower he received in return.

The press of bodies between Harry and Severus was still dense. A particularly brave Hufflepuff seventh-year girl kissed the same cheek as Filius, and then Harry's own son James Sirius Potter—the traitor—kissed the cheek that Hooch had earlier claimed. It was likely on some kind of dare, if the wild shrieks of glee from Jamie's cluster of friends were any indication. 

Despite the duplicitous role that the former spy had played in the war, it seemed that there were now quite a few people—more than enough—who were willing to offer Severus a kiss for the holidays. 

One berry left.

With a wicked smirk, Minerva McGonagall, who'd come back from her retirement as a special guest for the evening, swept forward and kissed Severus directly on the lips.

The sprig of mistletoe over Severus's head disappeared in a satisfied puff of green smoke. 

His shoulders sagging, Harry shook his head at himself. Another opportunity lost. And what had just happened proved something: Severus had built a new life for himself in the last fourteen years, and it was a good one. He didn't need anything that Harry could offer.

And yet...Harry wasn't a Gryffindor for nothing. Champion of lost causes and all that.

With the crowd around Severus thinning now that the mistletoe had disappeared, it was easier for Harry to nudge through the rest of them and come to a stop in front of the flustered Headmaster, who was still arching a reluctantly amused eyebrow at where Minerva was bent over with uproarious laughter.

Harry waited until the older man noticed him. Waited until Severus's dark gaze swept over his face questioningly, then flickered with apprehension because of whatever it found there.

"Severus," Harry breathed. He stood tall and pressed a kiss against the man's thin lips.

He stepped back. The noises in the Great Hall seemed unusually hushed. Harry looked into Severus's dear face, which was frozen in shock, and nodded once to himself, then turned and walked away. 

He corralled Al and Jamie—Al was hiding with his best friend Scorpius Malfoy under the desserts table and had sugar all over his face—to say goodnight and tell them to be good for the rest of the evening. Then he took the long, slow descent back to his hut at the forest's edge through the glittering snow.

It was cold in the cabin, but Harry didn't particularly feel like building anything more than a small fire. He took care of getting ready for bed quickly: he just wanted to lie down, and maybe his cat would purr against his chest until he fell asleep.

He had tucked himself in under three blankets and was about to douse the lamp when a knock sounded on the door.

Harry got up again to open it. "Fuck, you're icy!" he exclaimed when he saw who was standing on his doorstep and how frosted the other man had got during the trek from the castle. "Come in out of the snow."

Harry made sure the door was sealed tight again and had the flames roaring higher in the fireplace with a wave of his wand. He helped Severus hang up his wet cloak.

"The dance is over?" he asked when the man was standing in front of the fire in just his robes. "All the children are in bed?"

"Yes," Severus answered, the first word he'd spoken since arriving. His expression as he turned to face Harry was watchful, blanched.

"Good," Harry said. And then, "I…"

But he trailed off, nervous. Anxious. It was as he'd told Severus the previous year: it was hard to accept that what he wanted could possibly be his for the taking, his to keep.

The older man was the one who finally broke the silence. His hands were clenched into fists at his sides, the nails digging into his palms. "You," he choked out, nearly a growl. His dark eyes were still fixed on Harry's face, wide and fathomless. "You are beautiful, good-natured. Intelligent, compassionate, courageous. You could have anyone."

Hearing this—and understanding what it meant—reminded Harry of the first time he'd seen Hogwarts. He'd been eleven and riding a boat across the Great Lake, and his life up to that point had been fists breaking his glasses and spiders in his cupboard. And then, suddenly, there it was, rising up in the dark: a magic castle, promising a future that was so different from the present he couldn't even imagine it—except to know that it would be much, much better.

"You came here to tell me not to be in love with you?" Harry asked. "Because it's years too late for that."

Severus was trembling, despite the warmth that was suffusing the small room from the fire. "Little idiot," he gasped, and then, " _Harry_."

There were fingers tangled in Harry's hair, another hand cupping his chin and cheek. 

As easy as that, Harry's doubts and fears dropped away. Each of them was a weight shed, leaving him light enough to lift off the floor without a broom. Harry grinned. How could he not, when his chest was so buoyant with joy? 

"But what about you, Severus?" he asked huskily. "I'm sure about this, but are you?"

Severus's scarred throat was bobbing in a swallow. The way he was looking at Harry made Harry feel as if the things he'd just said—that Harry was beautiful and all those other lovely words—were absolutely true.

"Harry Potter," the man finally answered, his gaze still devouring Harry's face. "I have contented myself with holding you in my arms just once every twelve months for fourteen years." He took a deep breath. "As such, even if we only touched once a year for another decade...I do believe that I would love you for the rest of my life."

"Oh my god," Harry breathed. He could barely keep his knees from giving out after hearing a declaration like that. Groaning and laughing all at once, he surged up for another kiss. 

It was harsh and tender. When Severus opened his mouth and Harry licked inside to find wet heat and the welcoming curl of the other man's tongue, it was all Harry could do to yank them toward his bed and tumble them down.

After that, the only words they exchanged were half-spoken, half-gasped. 

"How should we—" and "What do you like?" 

"Would you—" and "Can I, please?"

"Are you in pain?" and "God, no…" 

"Do you like that?" and "Yeah. Feels so good. Fuck, don't stop—"

"I won't," Severus promised. He was licking at the shell of Harry's ear as he spoke. 

"Harder," Harry whined a short time later. And "That's it," Severus whispered, still in Harry's ear. "Work for it, you beauty. You utter aggravation."

Harry couldn't keep from bursting into laughter again at that. Making love to Severus felt like nothing so much as relief, one of the greatest reliefs of Harry's life. "I love you too, you pillock," he groused, happy in the knowledge that Severus was going to work for it, too.

~

"Worth the wait?" Harry asked when they were lying curled together a satisfyingly long time later on rumpled sheets, sweaty and sated. Harry's left arm was looped over the other man's slender chest.

"As long as the waiting's finally over," Severus said, shooting Harry a dark look over his shoulder. "I'm aware that these things can take time, but don't you think fourteen years was a bit excessive?"

"It's done with. I promise." Harry pressed a kiss on one sharp shoulder blade and ran a hand soothingly up and down his beloved's side. Because he could, he also licked softly at the sweaty nape of Severus's neck. The older man's skin smelled just as enticing as Harry remembered: wood smoke. And apricots.

"Hey, Severus?" he murmured a short while later.

"Mm?" Severus grunted in answer, sounding like he was already halfway asleep.

Harry grinned and twisted slightly so that he could look out the window and watch the snow fall. 

_I can't wait to see you in sunlight_ , he thought about saying. Or _I can't wait to see you with my kids._ Or maybe even _What flavor lube do you want to try next?_

But those would be conversations for tomorrow, when they were both entirely awake.

"Happy December 22nd," he said instead, pulling the blankets over them both and tucking the edges tight.

**Author's Note:**

> The title of this story is from "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost.
> 
> Whose woods these are I think I know.  
> His house is in the village though;  
> He will not see me stopping here  
> To watch his woods fill up with snow.
> 
> My little horse must think it queer  
> To stop without a farmhouse near  
> Between the woods and frozen lake  
> The darkest evening of the year.
> 
> He gives his harness bells a shake  
> To ask if there is some mistake.  
> The only other sound’s the sweep  
> Of easy wind and downy flake.
> 
> The woods are lovely, dark and deep,  
> But I have promises to keep,  
> And miles to go before I sleep,  
> And miles to go before I sleep.
> 
> Please leave a comment here or at [LiveJournal](https://snape-potter.livejournal.com/3893278.html), [Insanejournal](http://asylums.insanejournal.com/snape_potter/1822620.html), or [Dreamwidth](https://snape-potter.dreamwidth.org/1150672.html).


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